Boviosity!

Let's start with a hymn, shall we?

(sung to the tune of "God Bless America")

I am an Anglican.
I'm C of E.
Neither high church,
Nor low church,
I am Catholic and Protestant and free.
Not a Mormon,
Not a Presby,
Not a Baptist
White with foam,
I am an Anglican,
One step from Rome!
I am an Anglican,
One step from Rome.

(No, I didn't write that, by the way. It's all over the internet. I saw it on alt.religion.christian.episcopal.)

Nobody at my church is talking (with me) about the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, to the position of Bishop of New Hampshire diocese of the Episcopal church. Sunday my preacher only mentioned the issue to say he wouldn't be talking about it in his sermon, and referred any questions about the General Convention to the three parishioners who were there. My only exposure to actual in-your-face debate/arguing/outrage on the issue is the newsgroup, alt.religion.christian.episcopal.

My personal opinion is pretty close to this one here, stated by a gay guy on a.r.c.e. in response to a post laying out the opposite position. The opposing guy goes first:

Where I DO think we have solid ground for argument is this: This man is open and practicing homosexual, who obviously isn't repentent because he obviously doesn't think his homosexuality is something he need to repent from.

Precisely. If faithful love is not a burden upon one's duly-informed and prayerful examination of conscience, then it is hardly sinful, even by Roman Catholic theological standards. The key point is that the appeal to conscience cannot be used as a "slider". One must truly be convinced, and with sound reason and sober judgment, that what one are doing is a furtherance of God's Loving Presence and Compassion on earth.

Now, there are those who reply, "aaah, so anything goes as long as the go-er
has convinced himself he's all right." But I think that ignores the "sound
reason and sober judgment" aspect of Dana's presentation. Sure, Ted Bundy
thought he was as a God, but that doesn't mean he would be elected Bishop.
And, yes, as many many many many people on a.r.e. point out, I'm quite sure there are pig f*ckers and pedophiles and other freaks just itching to become Episcopal Bishops now. They ignore that the true indicator of Gene Robinson's "sound reason and sober judgment" is that he made it through a nomination and election process overseen by others of sr & sj.

I've read a little bit of scholarly writing on the issue; there are bible verses
that, read uncritically, lend much support to the notion that homosexuality
is a sin. Here is the most convincing study of the topic I've found. I'll just copy the intro here, because the whole thing needs to be read and understood.

Sexual issues are tearing our churches apart today as never before. The issue of homosexuality threatens to fracture whole denominations, as the issue of slavery did one hundred and fifty years ago. We naturally turn to the Bible for guidance and find ourselves mired in interpretive quicksand. Is the Bible able to speak to our confusion on this issue?

The debate over homosexuality is a remarkable opportunity, because it raises in an especially acute way how we interpret the Bible, not in this case only, but in numerous others as well. The real issue here, then, is not simply homosexuality, but how Scripture informs our lives today.

Is he using special pleading to make a sin OK because it makes him feel enlightened? I can't say. I can say that I'm more troubled by people who use the bible to thwack people over the head for sins that just "feel wrong," while ignoring the many enjoinders against head-thwacking.

It's interesting to see a bunch of Episcopalians, who would normally snicker at fundamentalists, using this issue as an excuse to return to "keeping the scriptures free of humanist taint." We episcopalians are encouraged to "read, mark, and inwardly digest" the scripture and use our reason and experience to understand it in order to make a way for ourselves and God in the world. If these gays feel that they are made this way and that it would kill them inside not to be able to get some backdoor lovin', then I can't see God having any more problem than with any of us other sinners.

A troubling aspect of this is that, as the African bishops point out (see the other links on this page for other samples), it goes against a resolution passed in the last Lambeth Conference (the worldwide meeting of the Anglican Communion, held every 10 years) where the communion agreed they wouldn't pull anything like this, specifically as related to homosexuality. So they have a procedural argument against this kind of thing as it is understandably a shock to their communicants. Of course, the African Bishops are the ones who received special dispensation to admit polygamists because that's just the way it's done over thereabouts. I'm not saying that excuses anything and everything goes, but the Lambeth Conference resolution was not binding and it's still a matter of conscience, not mere procedure, whether or not the US Church has forced a schism.

Whew. One more thing. The Anglican Communion has survived storms like this in the past, most recently with the ordination of women. The objection to homosexuality feels a whole lot like those objections, to me. As much as I wish to avoid the appearance of preening my open-mindedness, I will say that the bilge spewing from a lot of those in opposition to this guy makes me glad I've found a way to disagree with them. Yeah, that puts me on the side of some really bad queens who scream homophobia when somebody cuts them off in traffic, but so be it.